


sing for your soul

by copperiisulfate



Category: Gintama
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4788815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This, perhaps, is the price of survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sing for your soul

 

It's raining, always raining these days. 

He stands tall in spite of it, never mind that his teeth are chattering, never mind that his hair sticks to his skin like a dark sheet. You want to tease him about it, if only to break the silence, if only to change the air, but you don't quite have the heart.

He exhales and begins to wring the hem of his coat when you all finally make it inside.

The water that drips on the floor is rust-coloured. This isn't new. It's just that you tend to wear more white so it shows on you more easily, and so, sometimes you forget. With his long hair and the soft angles to his face, you forget what his hands have also done and can also do.

You think that it should make you feel better. 

It doesn’t.

 

 

*

 

 

 _Traitor_ , Takasugi hisses, the day after Tatsuma leaves.

You can't chase starlight, can't really chase anything.

You are not like them and you have always known this.

You have never been one for honour, for country, for revenge. You could not ever understand it. The unfortunate corollary of course: they could never understand you.

Zura watches you like a hawk for some days after Tatsuma leaves.

 

 

*

 

 

And now, it's behind you.

Or as behind you as it will ever be, what with ghosts behind your eyelids and screams echoing in your skull. You can't chase them away if you tried, sometimes don't even dare to try, and the only thing that barely cuts it at times is when you manage to drink yourself to sleep.

You think that you hardly deserve the respite. There's a saying about penance. You forget most of it or who even said it but only remember that it was important, remember the shape of the word, the weight of it in the back of your throat, settling inside your lungs.

You've never been able to breathe without the constant stench of blood in your lungs.

This, perhaps, is the price of survival.

 

 

*

 

 

Kagura howls with laughter and Shinpachi croons badly and you fall asleep through the noise and it is--this is--different.

Slowly, when you begin to breathe, it just smells like the food stalls in the streets and the perfumes the women wear, like dogcrap in your apartment and Otae burning her kitchen down, like the grass and the dirt and the smoke from the pipes and just.  _Edo_.

 

 

*

 

 

He’s disheveled and on the run when he collides into you, and your stomach drops. 

You think you might be sick and really, it’s a feeling that never quite completely goes away, not since.

 _Zura_ , you think, like a reflex, no matter how many times he has corrected you in vain. 

For a fraction of a second, it all comes crashing down.

You try and fail and try and fail over and over, rinse and repeat, to get away from him, to continue to _keep yourself_  away from him.

You were doing so well, you think to yourself.

You were doing _so goddamned well_.

 

 

*

 

 

Every time Tatsuma touches down on earth, you want to pull at his ridiculous hair and sometimes you hate that he's back even if, mostly, you're glad that he left, for more reasons than you can probably ever articulate.

Still, sometimes, you also hate that he left, just a little. 

It's not fair at all and you know it. He'd asked you to come. He always _still_ asks you to come.

And you’d be lying if you said you weren’t tempted sometimes but it’s not like you’d go anyway.

There's not much that you believe in but you do not walk away from what you believe in. You've never much believed in honour or country or revenge, but you do believe in this.

And just as you did back then, you believe in him.

And so you let him walk away, instead, again and again.

 

 

*

 

 

In the dead of the night, on the rooftop after the kids are asleep, Zura says to you:  _Don't leave me again._

You hate that it makes you want to swallow those words and run, makes you want _so much more_ for him than _this_.

He sighs at your silence.

And you think: _I could lie to you._

But then, you know better.

 

 

*

 

 

The thing with Takasugi is that somewhere, in your heart of hearts, you feel that you’ve always known it.

Either he is going to kill you or you are going to kill him.

You have believed this for a long, long time, from as far back as you were both children, except--slowly and surely--it seems that the context has changed.

When you were twelve, you'd thought you'd wring his neck.

When he was sixteen, you were dead sure he'd keep your head under the water until your eyes rolled back.

And now? 

It's just blood and blood, yours and his, running the same. You cannot tell where yours ends, cannot tell where his begins.

The thing with Takasugi that makes you laugh in spite of yourself is that no matter what, regardless of who kills whom, you will still die; he will still win.

 

 


End file.
